But the terror is muted over, like a gray, melting demon has not allowed me to even feel the fear.

Last night, I committed a grave sin. I can’t detail and confess the sin online, only that I committed it. I heard Our Lady’s voice tell me at the very moment after the sin was committed: “You have a committed a grave sin.”

Perhaps this wasn’t the actual voice of Our Lady; most likely, my own conscience was dictating this to me.

Yet the sin was committed and cannot be undone.

Sin is about life. Sin committed by myself, the people who would be counted among God’s number, is not about trying to hurt God; it’s about trying to feel alive. So much sin involves our emotional faculties, so much sin involves our feeling alive and our need to feel alive; even something simple like stealing something gives an adrenaline rush because one is “breaking a rule.”

So we sin, and we sin all for the sake of seeking to be alive.

A Red State Mystic wrote recently about wanting Reality over reality, and I want the same. Mystics throughout the ages have suggested that this life is like a dream, and that we must wake up.

Only I would say that this life is like a nightmare, and I know I’m asleep, and I still can’t seem to wake up; I’m screaming, I’m screaming so loudly, and I can’t find my way out.

I have those rare few moments where I do make it out, where I wake up, and I think, “Oh…!”

But those moments, those awe-inspiring moments of feeling alive, are becoming foggier and foggier. My mind feels as though it’s perpetually asleep, as though there’s always a wall between me and the world around me, and now, all I want to do is cry about it, because I don’t know what to do, I can’t imagine what to do, I can’t figure out how to change things.

I cry out to God, and God turns a deaf ear to me. It doesn’t matter that I witness to Him when I can: “Yes, I hear You! I hear You in the flow of the song, in the blow of the wind; I see you in the symbols of my dreams, I see you in the smile of children. Yes, I feel you when the covers are snug around me in my bed, when I walk into the morning warmth before going to Mass.” No, I am despised none the less!

I sound like the biggest pseudo-psalmist emo-boy that ever existed.

So, in summary: I am separated both from life and Life. I am caught in the in-between, in a world that’s awful and won’t give me the pleasures of the world and won’t give me the pleasures of God. It’s like being dead. Or Dead. This must be what Hell is like.

Certainly, I’m severely behind on posting a number of blogs that should have already been up. The main issue has been my being sick recently with various kinds of sinus congestion and colds, plus the strain on my eyes when sitting and staring at a computer screen for a lengthy period of time.

That being said, I should point out one important aspect of spirituality that, if everyone who reads this blog were to ignore and dismiss anything else I’ve written, should be considered and relished and tested out, that of what I personally term “spiritual delay.”

Spiritual delay is something that in our modern culture we must acclimate to, living in this world where we’re accustomed to instant or semi-instant gratification. Spiritual delay is the fact of reality that a prayer or meditation or wish is not most often immediately answered; in fact, it may take some time to receive any kind of substantial or adequate response.

The same is true even with visualization. For instance, one visualizes light on a headache to heal it; the headache doesn’t heal this minute or the next minute, but perhaps within the hour or two or three hours from now, it DOES go away; one prays for the same thing, and the prayer is not immediately answered, yet a few hours later, the prayer IS answered. One repeats the Name of God and sees no immediate benefit of repeating His Name, yet the next day, the bliss of His grace comes to us.

This is something to ALWAYS remember, that the help, that the grace, that the benefit WILL come at some point in time, especially with substantial practice.

Another major realization lately has been of the Holy Spirit and the Wiccan Goddess. The Holy Spirit has been recognized as God the Mother for quite some time among Christian mystics, most notably the Gnostics, and it simply makes sense: God the Father, God the Mother, God the Son. The Trinitarian formula then, is somehow complete with the Divine Feminine being present within it.

I mean to make the association with the Goddess as I always understood her to be associated with the Day, with the Sun, with Light, and so forth, and I see the same to be true of the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is the person of the Holy Trinity that calls us to prayer, that teaches us to pray, the invokes and kindles the Longing and Love for God; verily, we might even say that the Holy Spirit IS THE LONGING FOR GOD. This would account, at least intellectually, for the Sufis saying that one’s Longing for God IS God’s Presence, IS God’s declaration that He is there.

Whatever the case may be, I have personally found that prayer to the Holy Spirit has been the most immediate and intimate relationship to God that I’ve found. This could potentially be because of my background in Pentecostal churches, though I highly doubt that plays as significant of a role as one might guess.

But back to the point, Wicca had a huge emphasis on ritual, and of course, I now see that magic, that ritual, that all these things, the transformation of Will into Reality and so forth, are the domain of the Holy Spirit; it is with a greater certainty that I know the miracles take place because of the Holy Spirit, and that the bread and wine truly become Christ’s Body and Blood BECAUSE of the Holy Spirit; She is, in fact, a key in the Holy Eucharist, and it saddens me to know that despite Her importance, She is often pushed to the side in Christianity and not given proper reverence or emphasis.

Even to me, the importance of the Holy Spirit has been occluded for the past four years as well, and I did wonder many times how She fit into the Holy Trinity and why She was deemed important, how She became more than simply a reference to God’s presence on Earth as the Jehovah’s Witnesses insist. Even Bernadette Roberts, in all her great elucidation of the Christian mystery in her books, seems to focus namely on the Mystery of Christ- indeed, she is not wrong in this, as the Mystery of Christ is inexhaustible- but her reference to the Holy Spirit is the love exchanged between the Father and Son, and no more is really said.

But does not leave us with the full or clear picture of exactly how important She truly is, and that is exactly the mystery into which I’m being drawn.

At the same time, it truly amazes me that in our present world Christianity and its profundity is so often and so easily cheapened. I can’t quite grasp how something that IS so profound can devolve into something that is so treacherous and easy to revile, but such is the nature of corrupted men.

Another issue that has come about more recently is the de-emphasis of the crucifixion and death of Christ on the cross. While the matter is open to interpretation, especially among Gnostics, I think an issue is of making the Incarnation itself the true sacrifice and disregarding the rest of the mystery of the life of Christ.

In fact, I think we can resolve rather easily the issues regarding the esteem of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God and Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix by focusing on the Incarnation, and so, too, we can uphold the power of the Crucifixion, all at once, if we look to the true Mystery of Christ.

And here the true Mystery is clear enough: it is not strictly the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, or the Resurrection that matter; rather, THE ENTIRE LIFE OF CHRIST IS THE ACT OF REDEMPTION ITSELF; CHRIST IS THE BEING OF REDEMPTION, THE PROOF AND ETERNAL EXISTENCE OF REDEMPTION.

What I mean to convey here is that the Mystery of Christ is not that He comes along and somehow “completes” the Hebrew tradition, as is the notion held by many modern Evangelicals; rather, Christ IS the Mystery of Salvation, of Sacrifice for the sake of Love, and so forth.

To address Mary’s role in this, I should say that God could have simply “appeared” somewhere without going through the process of human life, from beginning to end; instead, He chose a woman, a human being, through whom to manifest. Mary’s cooperation in the process of salvation seems, then, to take on a much larger role; indeed, she could not have been any ordinary woman.

The archetypal dimension of these things may speak of something quite different, where Mary is the potential of matter to give birth to Divinity that is both man and God. Perhaps this is the true mystery that happens all along; truly, the Eucharist is the revelation of the latent Christ within matter, and each Eucharist encompasses the celebration of Incarnation, Passion, Crucifixion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension.

I wish the Mystery were less obfuscated by the legalism and attempt of modernism of the various Churches. Maybe Christ will one day reunite all the Churches to Himself again. In the meantime, I will devote myself to His Most Sacred Heart and pray most fervently that the Unknown Father would reveal Himself to us in whatever ways He can.

I have literally been meaning to write this blog for a while, as its contents may be one of the more important things that I’ve put forth.

During meditation a few weeks ago I made a discovery of a kind of “mind-map,” if you will, that explains how the psyche works during meditation.

Too much theory and too many models and too many maps CAN be problematic as they can quickly become overly complicated and will essentially tell us nothing; this will be simple.

Three parts of the mind include

1) The Participating Thinker

2) The Subconscious Thoughts

3) The Ego

Now, to explain what I mean:

The Participating Thinker is the part of our mind that consciously engages in thinking, that consciously weighs options, ideas, and goes through the whole process. Someone says something, we think on it, we engage it, it happens because we’re pushing the buttons and driving the motors.

The Participating Thinker is the easiest part of the mind to relax and get settled. Focusing on one’s breath or whatever object of meditation is what will cause the PT to slowly disappear.

The Subconscious Thoughts are more difficult to deal with, mainly because we’ve no conscious control over them. I consider this part of the mind to be a kind of threshold between the conscious and subconscious, as these thoughts are the ones that seem to intrude on meditation relentlessly; one moment, you’re quiet, then the next, you’re having an argument in your head over the price of eggs or wanting to explain something to someone.

IF you can control the Subconscious Thoughts and get them to stop, good- that’s the hard part.

Then there’s the Ego- the actual awareness of all these things going on. The Ego has, so far, not disappeared for me during meditation. I suppose one might say I’m not very good at meditating, but I’ve almost always been aware of what was happening and maintained a self-reflection in knowing that I exist.

Now, there may well be more parts to the mind that than these three; the subconscious itself, the unconscious, what have you, but I’m saying that for the purpose of meditation, THIS is what I’ve seen, and I thought it would be good to report it.

Gnosticism, as with any tradition, can get things wrong, and I think so often that Gnosticism is conceived of in terms of our precious spirits being trapped in our awful bodies, and that what we must ultimately do is break free from the bodies to return to God.

But the issue here is that perhaps this is not what Sophia meant to do in placing the spirit in Adam in the first place. Rather, I think the myth illustrates something else happening- this is Our Lady’s way of redeeming the material world that ultimately belongs to Her and the Lord Jesus Christ anyway.

Our mission here, in these bodies, is not about escaping them or the material universe. Rather, our mission is to draw God fully and completely into this world, to take what the Demiurge has messed up and liberate it. We are here to free matter, we are here to liberate the material universe from the Demiurge; we are here not only to participate in the Redemption that Christ afforded us, but we are here to continue the Redemption for the entire cosmos .

So truly the act of Salvation from Jesus Christ is not simply a matter of His saving us; he enjoins us to save His world, to truly emulate Him, to truly be Christ-like.

The Name “Sophia” does not mean “Wisdom” for no reason at all, and here we see that She, too, participates in the plan of Salvation.

I sense a new era dawning. Whether or not this is merely personal or something that’s happening collectively that thus becomes personal, I cannot say, but the vibrations and underlying world view that I have is beginning to shift again and has been for a little over a month. What is the mystery that is being unveiled, I wonder? What is it that God is trying to tell us?

Today is a calm, sleepy day. The Grace of God will pour out soon, Amen, Amen.